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Practically every government preparedness site recommends that people store an extra supply of the prescription medicines they use in case of an extended emergency. For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.Gov site suggests that every American, as part of their emergency home preparedness kit, have an extra supply of:
“Prescription medicines you take every day such as insulin, heart medicine and asthma inhalers. You should periodically rotate medicines to account for expiration dates.” Ask your doctor about storing prescription medications such as heart and high blood pressure medication, insulin and other prescription drugs.
But the problem is that most insurance plans and HMO’s do not allow customers to purchase extra medicine. So, you have officials instructing the public to stock medicine that many cannot get even if they wanted to. Unfortunately, this kind of situation is too often typical of citizen preparedness information campaigns — telling people to do something that isn’t possible let alone cost or time effective for them and then not helping them in any significant way to deal with that obstacle.
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